P Tracy - Snow Blind

Tinker leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and saw Toby Myerson’s mother again, braced crookedly in her wheelchair, one side of her wrinkled face sagging from the stroke that took half her body and most of her speech, but left awareness and emotion and a pair of eyes that said more than Tinker wanted to hear. ‘No family except the mother. Toby took care of her. Don’t know what’s going to happen to her now.’

He started sliding neatly labeled file folders across the desk, some fatter than others. ‘Reports are starting to trickle in, but it’s going to be an avalanche soon. Must have been hundreds of people out there today; plus we’ve got to go through all the film and stills the media took; then there’s the door-to-door on all the houses around the park, and you know how that goes. As soon as people find out there was a murder, we’re going to hear about a million parked cars that, now that they think of it, looked kind of suspicious…’ He blew a frustrated sigh out of puffed cheeks that drooped a little lower every year he was on the job. ‘The book on this one is going to weigh a ton.’

Magozzi nodded. ‘You have Espinoza on it?’

‘Yeah. We’re copying him on everything, he’s plugging it into the Monkeewrench software, but there’s still a lot of stuff that needs eyes on.’

‘Always is.’

Johnny McLaren finally hung up the phone and rolled bloodshot eyes in their direction. Rumor had it the flame-haired detective started every weekend with a Friday-night toot that lasted forty-eight hours, and looking at him on a Saturday made Magozzi believe it. ‘I got a little. Could be good, could be bad. Toby Myerson and Tommy Deaton were together last night. Both of them were cross-country ski fanatics; couldn’t wait to get off last night so they could hit the trails.’

Gino nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s what Deaton’s wife told us. You know, I took one look at that first snowman and thought whacko serial killer posing his trophy. Then we found the second one, and I’m thinking, holy shit it’s like serial-killer winter Olympics. Then we find out they were both ours, and it started to look like some asshole with a hard-on for cops. Now that we know those guys were together, we might have to look for a personal angle. Like maybe only one of them was the target, and the other just happened to get in the way.’

Tinker liked that. ‘So maybe it didn’t have anything to do with them being cops.’

‘That would be the dream scenario.’

‘I like that angle a lot better than some serial killer just plugging people at random, or cops in particular,’ Magozzi said.

‘Don’t we all. Doesn’t mean it’s the way it went down.’

They all looked up at the heavy click of Gloria’s heels on the floor and saw her fill the aisle between the desks with pink. ‘I’m going to catch a bite before the Chief gets back. You’re getting those reports pulled together for him, right?’

Skinny, red-haired McLaren looked at her and grinned, forgetting for a second that there were dead cops and a bad case and a late night ahead. ‘You gotta tell me how you get that skirt to stick out so far.’

Gloria ignored him. ‘Switchboard’s screening till I get back, but Evelyn’s on tonight, so cut her some slack. Last time she hung up on the city council chair and put through some idiot who said the CIA was planning the overthrow of the government in his living room. Chief damn near had her canned.’

‘Can’t really blame the woman,’ Gino said. ‘Chair of the city council or a paranoid idiot. Kind of a toss-up, if you ask me.’

She scowled, turned on her heel, then spun at the last moment and looked straight at McLaren. ‘Crinolines,’ she said, then disappeared out the door.

‘What’re crinolines?’ McLaren whispered.

Gino gave him a look. ‘You are such a fashion fetus. They’re really stiff slips. They got plastic hoops in them so they stick way out. Fifties stuff. Must have been a retro wedding. Can’t believe she even went to one of those things, let alone dressed up in a getup like that.’

McLaren was still staring at the place he had seen Gloria last.

It had been full dark for an hour, and Grace could still hear the irritating scrape of shovels against concrete from inside her house. In a workingclass neighborhood like this, there weren’t a lot of snowblowers, and the shovels had been busy all day, clearing yesterday’s storm from walks and driveways. A few of them were manned by intrepid youngsters who trolled from house to house, picking up a little extra cash for a lot of hard labor. There weren’t many such baby entrepreneurs these days; most kids were parked in front of the TV or a PlayStation, hands out for allowances earned by their mere existence. The few who worked the small, older houses on Ashland Avenue in St Paul never bothered to knock on Grace MacBride’s door.

She’d had high-tech heating grates built into her sidewalks and driveway before she bought the place six years earlier, and you could Rollerblade on those sidewalks in a blizzard. Not that Grace minded physical labor, but she’d been hiding from a lot of people in those days, and there was no way she would expose herself long enough to shovel a path through a Minnesota winter. Supposedly no one was trying to kill her anymore, but it was just plain silly to take chances.

This evening, inside the snug little house she’d converted into a fortress, she was practicing the MacBride version of slovenliness.

No one ever saw Grace dressed like this, except Charlie, of course, and since human speech was the only trick the dog hadn’t mastered yet, he wasn’t talking. The flannel pajamas had been a gift from Roadrunner; soft and warm and, bless the stick man, black. Clearly a lot of thought had gone into the purchase, because the pants were wide enough to provide easy access to the derringer she kept strapped to her ankle when she was working at home. But the very softness of the lightweight flannel felt dangerous. Grace liked weighty fabrics between her and the rest of the world.

If it had been anyone but Magozzi, she wouldn’t have opened the front door. He got a silly little grin on his face when he saw her outfit. ‘You’re in pj’s. I find that enormously encouraging.’

‘You’re early, Magozzi.’

‘I thought I could help you cook.’

‘Supper’s already on the stove. I was just about to get dressed.’

‘Or I could help with that.’

Grace rolled her eyes and stepped aside while Magozzi hung up his coat and greeted Charlie. These days he was here so often that the dog no longer went completely ballistic when he walked in. The joy was still there, but it was a little more subdued, almost respectful, as if in Charlie’s wee brain Magozzi had made the transition from playmate to master. Grace wasn’t sure how she felt about that. ‘You’re in a pretty good mood for a cop with two new homicides on his plate.’

Magozzi didn’t even look up from patting the dog. ‘You heard?’

‘Harley and Roadrunner called, made me turn on the television.’

He straightened and looked at her, and there was nothing good-humored in his expression. ‘They were cops, Grace. Both of them.’

In the year and a half he’d known her, Magozzi had rarely seen Grace visibly express any emotion. She was closing in on the mid-thirties, and yet there wasn’t a line on that face; not a smile crinkle at the corners of her mouth, not the slightest memory of a frown between her brows. It was like looking at the blank canvas of a baby’s face, before the joy and the heartache of life left their lovely marks, and it always made Magozzi a little sad. But sometimes, if he looked very closely, he could see things in her eyes that never went any further.

‘I’m sorry, Magozzi,’ she said, and he felt a door close on the outside world and all the terrible things that happened there.